SELECTIONS FROM

THE PROWLER COLLECTION

OF DISPOSABLE UTENSILS

Essay by Luigi BalleriniPhotographs by David Prowler

Design by Robert Langenbrunner

© 2007 David Prowler33 Hartford Street

San Francisco, California 94114info@prowler.org

A WORD REGARDING THE COLLECTION

It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to share with the broader public my col-lection of disposable utensils.

They are typically unnoticed and designed to be discarded. But they do their jobs honestly. Their designers are, almost without exception, anonymous.

By and large they are environmentally indefensible. Landfills worldwide are well-stocked with unloved disposable utensils, artifacts of our time which will outlast us all. They are a lot less “disposable” than we believe. Seeing them is the first step toward cherishing them and the Collection invites the visitor to do so, perhaps for the first time.

I hope that a visit to the exhibition or examination of this accompanying catalogue will increase the viewer’s appreciation of the hidden beauty of these commonplace tools and perhaps, by extension, of the beauty of the quotidian.

David ProwlerSan Francisco, CaliforniaDecember 2007

And The Dish (and the Fork and the Knife) Ran Away With The SpoonLuigi Ballerini

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, / The cow jumped over the moon. The little dog laughed to see such fun / and the dish ran away with the spoon. – Traditional

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS NO FORK

We have come a long way since the times of Henri III of Valois (1551-1589), when indulging in the use of a fork at the dining table was tantamount to a reputation of effeminacy. The French were very unhappy: first the punishing defeat at Pavia in 1525, then internecine religious and political strife, and now forks. Will it never end? They blamed his mother, of course, the notorious Catherine de’ Medici, one of those eyetalians, as they said in the Chateaux de la Loire and around Montparnasse. She had not raised a king, but a queen, as it were, with her obsession for forks! To tell the whole truth that there were other clues: cross-dressing, love for jewels and perfumes, seductive music, lacy scarves, exchanges of lascivious conversations and, to top it all, an undisputed preference for the company of bitchy men over that of bedroom eyed women (no matter how deliciously bawdy and tender they might have looked to the rest of France.) But these, of course, were effects.

The cause was Catherine who, to be fair, merely passed down to her son something of which she herself had been a victim. Everyone knows how much tastier food is, when eaten with one’s fingers. Finger-lickin’ good, in fact. And how could you possibly lick fingers that are at two, then three, and eventually four tines removed from viande de mouton à la Marotte or Porks tongue with ragoust? She too would have been happier eating with her fingers and, homely as she was, flirting with the Florentine pages who sallied through the halls of her palazzo. Such things were not to pass, however, and sporting forks must have felt to her like some sort of compensation, a revenge (a dish that tastes sweetest when eaten cold, and absolutely legendary when eaten with forks.) How can one be a Renaissance princess, the niece of a pope, in fact, and not be tempted to show them frogs (as they called them across the Arno and into the trees... cypress and olive trees) who was boss, and more to the point, how far a little sophistication could go.

That so much depended upon a well chiseled fork must have been, if not entirely clear, certainly intriguing, even to Emperor Charles V, the archenemy of the Valois who, we know for sure, owned a small collection of them, new and old. The temptation, and the practice, of course, of sticking them into one’s mouth, had been around for quite a while: long enough for us to suspect that Charles, brave as he had been in so many other sectors of his life, chickened out in front of it, and resorted to collecting them, much the way a man afraid of licking resorts to collecting stamps.

The use of forks as a superior eating device landed, surreptitiously, in Italy – in Venice to be precise – in 1003 when princess Mary, niece of Constantine VIII, came from Istanbul to wed Giovanni, the 19 year old son of Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The poor girl had no idea that the golden two tine tool she brought from home would stir a fuss and in fact meet with fiery opposition on the part of the local clergy who declared her a perfect example of oriental abomination: not only she compelled her eunuchs – priests yelled from the pulpit – to gather enough dew water for her to bathe in (she would not bathe in any other kind) but she insisted in using this two-horned instrument so clearly reminiscent of the devil itself.

What Medieval Venice could not swallow [sic] Renaissance Florence seems to have accepted without a hiccup. Forks were in use, for instance, at the Pucci’s, a rather distinguished family, as we learn by taking a close look at the painting Lorenzo De Medici gave them as a wedding gift in1483. The trilogy, as it were, is called Nastagio degli Onesti and it currently hangs at the Prado. Sandro Botticelli, who painted it, getting his inspiration from a story narrated by Boccaccio (Decameron, V, 8) did not forget to lay forks on the white tablecloth. A small triumph, for sure, but hardly a full compensation for the incredibly difficult life forks had to lead until then and would continue to lead for centuries to come.

Viewed as an insufferable extravaganza, as a downright exaggeration, even Louis XIV, the Sun King and the king, to be sure, of a rather rich list of exaggerations, much preferred fingers to forks and persuaded himself to use them only in 1684, when he moved his court to Versailles: clearly an adequate background to the use of forks had to be set up before he could bless it with his royal approval. Similar hardships forks met in a number of other countries, especially those under the sway of Sancta Catholica et Apostolica et Romana Ecclesìa where religious superstitions gave the fork the hardest of time. The Enlightenment did however bring about its liberation and all discussions about the infernal origin of the fork were dropped.

Such a tormented process and the consequent belatedness of the new course in fork-related events may not be without a cause. Indeed forks have something weird about them. No matter how you slice it (and though, for that, you‘d be better off with a knife) a fork smacks of aesthetics. And everybody knows how dangerous that can be: socially and politically. Spoons and knives are kind of natural. They are plausible and even obvious. They are solutions devised by human ingenuity in response to actual needs. Not exactly everywhere, to be sure, but in most places. As Bernard Rudofsky recounts in Now I Lay Me Down To Eat, “While cannibals eat everyday fare with their fingers, on the occasion of a special treat, such as the roast of human flesh, etiquette calls for a more stylish way of eating; although he may not sit down at a table, a bonviveur will not forgo the pleasure of impaling the meat.”

THE TRINITY

The Entrance of Plastic

Occasionally wood has been deemed a viable material (not so much for knives, however) while, much more recently, plastic has been used to produce disposable eating utensils.

Adopted as a solution to facilitate the hosting of informal parties, plastic cutlery has proven to be yet another cause for ecological alarm. The axis has shifted so much in favor of plastic that no opportunity has been left untapped: after September 11, to avert from their pilots the threat of being murdered, airlines forced even their first class passengers to cut through their meals with plastic knives. And the recent return to metal has been saluted a sign of victory over Islamic terrorism. We’ll show them!

All consideration about titanic clashes aside, one thing remains firmly established: disposable utensils can di-vorce the dignity of the instrument from the cuisine (if what is eaten with disposable utensils can still be called cuisine). The disregard for the tool devalues the entire eating ceremony. A first step is to regard what is in our hand en route to our mouths.

Farewell to the Table

There is however something even more disturbing in the ever increasing habit of eating with plastic tools, and that is the gradual disappearance of the table upon which forks and knives and spoons are supposed to be found (and foods customarily consumed.) Thanks to the ubiquitous presence and the lightness, and indeed the (deceiv-ingly) ephemeral quality of plastic, we can now eat anywhere and everywhere, standing up, driving, in classrooms while listening to fractal logics, in rooms waiting for babies to be born, in movie houses, and were it not for the smell (of the food) in restrooms! We can eat and chew gum and smoke at the same time (wherever smoking is allowed). Impervious to social manners as well as to any sense of privacy, the average taxpayer is free to chomp away at food conveniently perched on his/her kneecaps, window-sills, writing desks, dashboards, sidewalk curbs etc. Everywhere except, of course, on a decently clothed table. Are we to infer, that after plastic spoons we shall return to eating with bare hands? Why not envisage, then, after Edward Scissorhands, future generations of John Spoonmiddlefingers, Euridice Forkmetacarps and Leroy Knifewrists, Esquires? At any rate, even without plung-ing into science-fiction, isn’t this triumph of plastic utensils in the absence (or, more accurately, gradual disap-pearance of tables), a fact that, in and of itself, ought to grab our attention? Is it not a sublime example of pure and undiluted historical irony? Or is it historical justice? Are we to admit that, after all, those Venetian priests and the likes of Pier Damiani knew, for once, what they were talking about? The devil was implied all along and

his is the final laughter. After centuries of scheming and fighting to be admitted to the table, forks, spoons and knives will have sovereignty over a tableless land.

The Prowler Collection of Disposable Utensils

Whatever the future may have in stock for us, in the world of food intake and ex-table manners, we cannot but suspect, at the present time, the existence of a link between the particular circumstances we have described above and the creation of David Prowler’s Collection of Disposable Utensils. Watch out for that nomen, Prowler, which may not be an omen, but looks very much like a consequentia rerum. After the metaphysical wit displayed in his Telegram from Marcel Duchamp (1990), and The Name is Unimportant, a flat box containing cards upon which are printed such words as “Can a gift be as pure as a theft?”; after the irresistible lecture at the Hartford Street Zen Center (in 1999) which opens with “I thought that I should say something wise and, if possible, Zen. But what is Zen?” Are we not to suspect David Prowler to be engaged in yet another of his exquisite, sidestepping performances, the kind that no taxonomic diligence will ever be able to trap. If you prefer a sportive metaphor, is he not throwing us a ball so fast and so curved (yes, both at the same time) that not only goes un-hit, but defies the umpire’s capability of calling it?

By assuming that a full probe and a deep savoring of the idea upon which this collection is predicated would be unthinkable without linking the event and the times of its occurrence (no cause and effect relationship between them being implied, however), we are not trying to put temporal limitation to the value of its message, but merely indicating that Prowler’s is an unveiling of the exquisite fears and tremors that a fully cognizant love for the unlovable can release, and that a simple listing of curiosities, or even miracles could not possibly disclose.

Having meticulously cased the joint of his imagination, and prized possessions, Prowler has in fact assembled a collection based on an oxymoron, a statement whose raison d’être and declarative aspirations are one with the contradictory nature of the elements that make it up. Collecting means saving, hoarding, selecting and, eventu-ally, but not necessarily, exhibiting. Disposable means throw out.

And so to the question “why is this happening, and why is it happening now”, we should like to reply that, while disposing and collecting may indeed be viewed and accounted for as contradictory, the idea sustaining their cooperation “makes sense” in the only way logic needs to make sense in our time: one, enabling “the logician” to renounce the repetition of the well known without experiencing any sense of loss, and two, empowering him/her to turn that loss into an opportunity to explore all kinds of terra incognita, an unknown reality that demands to be experienced and cannot be experienced except through the intensity of tending to it. Example: renouncing words

as indicators of objects, re-energizes the semantic power of those words and catapults them into new signifying options. Latent as those options might have been in the material substance of the words themselves (sound, beat etc.), they cannot possibly emerge from it as long as a single obsessive application routs out all other signifying claims. Listen carefully to the words you use daily and they will tell you things you never suspected. Something similar even occurs within the realm of sensorial experience: constant use of salt “burns” one’s capacity to taste salt in unsalted situations: once the daily intake of salt is discontinued, you will begin to taste the saltiness of the universe. Which also means that after so much unidirectional (and production oriented) focusing, we now need to focus on distraction, and what we may collect from it.

Prowler’s disposable utensils neither rival nor parody Charlemagne’s collection of golden forks. They belong to different mental categories. Not simply because of the vast contrast between the rarity and preciousness of the former set and the divinely cheap exuberance of the latter; not because the ancient collection was unique while the contemporary can be multiplied ad libitum; not because of the distance between human craftsmanship and mechanical design (each having in tow a radically different notion of beauty) but, essentially, because of the unbridgeable gap separating authority, and the law of consumerism that accompanies it, from the responsibility of individuality.

Disposable utensils are easy. Much less so is the apotheosis as objects of beauty and redemption David Prowler has staged for them. Instilling a feeling of envy in all those who, visiting these pages, will realize that they too could have actually had, owned, and even possessed similarly irresistible objects is the hallmark of David Prowler’s achievement.

1 But what to do with the spork (spoon+fork)? See Plate 8.

Plate 1: Assorted ice cream utensilsPlastic and wood2.5” to 3”Designers unknown

Plate 2: Faux silver utensil set PlasticFork: 7”; Knife: 7.5”; Spoon: 6” Designer unknownCourtesy of Fred Pollack and Dorte Lindhardt

Plate 3: Rice pudding scoop Plastic 4.5”Designer unknown Donated by Arlyn Blake

Side view

Top view

Plate 4: Faux gold utensil set PlasticFork: 7.1”; spoon: 6.6”; knife: 7.1” Designer: Philippe Starck Acquired at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Plate 5: Asian collectionWooden chopsticks and paper wrappers, with Japanese and Chinese motifs8” – 10” Designers unknown

Plate 6: Utensil setClear plasticFork: 7”, knife: 7.5”; Spoon: 7”Designer unknown

Plate 7: Utensil set Plastic Fork: 7”; Knife: 7.5”; Soup spoon: 5.9”; Spoon: 6” Designer unknown

Plate 8: SporkPlastic6.8”Designer unknown

Plate 9: Utensil set Black plastic Fork: 7”; Spoon: 6.9”; Knife: 7”Designer unknown

Plate 10: Kiwi fruit spoon/cutterPlastic 4.5”Designer unknownNew ZealandDonated by Arlyn Blake

Plate 11: Utensil setPotato by-productFork 6.8”; Spoon 6.5”; Knife 6.8”Designer unknownDonated by Jack Badler

Plate 12: Hors d’œuvre forksWood3”Designer unknownDonated by Arlyn Blake

Plate 13: Utensil setBambooKnife 5.5”; spoon 5.4”; fork, 5.4”Designer unknown

Plate 14: Appetizer utensilsPlastic2.2”Designer unknownDonated by Arlyn Blake

Based in San Francisco, David Prowler is the author of A Telegram From Marcel Duchamp (1990) and other publications. He produced and curated Hit and Run Gallery shows in the 1980s as well as the 1999 Potato Show. He collaborated with Felipe Dulzaides on Double Take: A Billboard Project, a series of site specific billboards throughout San Francisco in 2005-6. He collects disposable utensils.

Poet, essayist and translator, Luigi Ballerini lives in New York and teaches modern and contemporary Italian Literature at the University of California (Los Angeles). His books of poetry include Che figurato muore (Scheiwiller, 1988), Che oror l’orient (Lubrina, 1991), Il terzo gode (Marsilio, 1994; American Edition: TheCadence of a Neighboring Tribe, Sun and Moon Press, 1997), Shakespeherian Rags (Quasar 1996), Uno monta la luna (Manni, 2001). Cefalonia (Mondadori,2005). He has published extensively on avant-garde literature, contemporary visual art, and poetry, as well as on gastronomy: see his editions of Pellegrino Artusi’s Sci-ence in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and Maestro Martino’s Book of the Cooking Art (University of California 2004). The general coeditor of the Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library (University of Toronto Press) and of Nuova Poesia Americana (Mondadori), his most recent book publication is Unyielding Machines of Lawrence Fane (Mazzotta, 2006).

The iconic nature of common tableware has been a long-standing theme of designer Robert Langenbrunner, who has a practice in San Francisco. Along with Diane Burk, he designed A Telegram From Marcel Duchamp and consulted on other Readymade Press publications.

This catalogue was published by Readymade Press in December 2007 in an edition of 100.

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Group or individual tours of the Prowler collection are by appointment only.

Arrangements can be made at info@prowler.org.

Thanks to Martine Aniel, Brian Banuelos, Jack Badler, Arlyn Blake, Diane Burk, Wendy Elliott,

Jeremy Mende, and Simone Perez.